It required but few words from me to undeceive her. Tea and chocolate were soon in readiness, and having tasted some of the former, I sat up in my bed waiting the arrival of the first surgeon to dress my wound. My batman, Dan Carsons, shortly afterwards made his appearance; he led up to the door of my tent three sheep, and had, moreover, a pig-skin of enormous size filled with right good wine which the Spaniards call _la tinta de la Mancha_: “And sure,” said he, “I heard of your being kilt, and I brought you this (pointing to the pig-skin of wine), thinking what a nate bolster it i’d be for you while you slept at your aise,” and, without waiting for my reply, he thrust the pig-skin under my head. “And look,” said he, shewing me a spigot at the mouth of my bolster, “when you’re thirsty at-all-at-all, you see nothing is more pleasant or aisy than to clap this into your mouth, and sure won’t it be mate and dhrink for you too?” “Oh, Jasus!” responded Nelly, “he’s kilt out and out; see, Dan, how the blood is in strames about the blankets.” A little learning is a dangerous thing, so—under certain circumstances—is a little laughing! and Dan Carsons and his wife made me laugh so immoderately, that a violent discharge of blood from my wound nearly put an end to my career in this world. Had it not been for the arrival of Dr. Grant, the staff-surgeon of the division, who just now made his appearance, I doubt much if any of my readers would ever have had the pleasure of reading these my reminiscences. But I must have done with myself, Dan Carsons, and his wife Nelly, and resume my narrative of the sale of the plunder with which our camp was, to use a mercantile phrase, glutted.